I Only Wanna Make You Happy

GOOD NEWS!
My fever that I've had for the past 48 hours or so is gonnnne!

OTHER NEWS!
I'm doing this homemaking tag thingy that's been going around. :)

"The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me!
My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It'll be done this year.
4. You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry or an article on properly cleaning your face before a masque. I may draw or paint something. I may bake something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog.

The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me!
*Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!
*Happy Homemaking!"


This is ~*very exciting*~ for me, because I really need to start building my portfolio for college. But I don't think I'm up to scruff just yet...so I'm going to use this as a bit of practice.

That means you most likely will be getting some kind of art, but I can't promise anything beyond that...it might be a painting, it might be a creepy little sewn together mess of a clothing item, it might be a drawing, it might be a story, it might be a clay figurine (the worst of all fates!), who knows?

(By the way, the lyric before the title reads "Believe me/ You really don't have to worry")
title from "I Think I Love You"

Life is Hard, you know, so Strike a Pose on a Cadillac

When I was a littler girl, it seemed like I was always in the Primary Room. I have all these bizarre, lost memories being there alone and happy, surrounded by people and lonely, and memories without any emotions at all. Why on Earth I was in The Primary Room so often, I have no idea. But I swear, it seems like I have enough memories there to fill a year.

On multiple occasions, I remember being the the Primary Room with Emily and/or friends, walking like an Egyptian. We'd sing the song (or, rather the chorus and the "ay-oh-ay-ohs" because what young children pay attention to anything else) and strut around with the whole hands-propped-at-awkward-angle thing going on.

By the way, what exactly is up with that? I've never seen a single hieroglyphic with his hands positioned in any such way. Ti, the awesome rich hippo-hunter-watcher in this image, has his hand up. But he doesn't look anything like the Bangles did in their ridiculous video or Wilson, Keppel, and Betty did in the routine it was based on. All I know is I grew up learning that was how Egyptians walked.

Like geese, apparently.

If I could talk to Ti, immediately after falling at his feet and thanking him for providing me ridiculously easy answers for almost every AP Art History Essay asking anything at all about "Power" or "Authority", I would ask him to walk for me. I'm sure his hands would be swinging awkwardly at his side, not bobbing back and forth. Now, Ti's a rich, important guy, so he'd probably strut and swagger, but even so! I'm sure he walks much more like people in the 21st century than like geese.

Now, giving the Bangles credit, they weren't referring to the ACTUAL manner of walking. And their lyrics themselves never mention don't ever mention having your hands up in awkward positions and bobbing them forwards and backwards like a drunken goose.

Oh, no. The lyrics to this song are far from silly...all anyone hears when they hear the song is the rhythmic beat and the memories of the dance move. They might get memories about walking around The Primary Room with your sister and friends, trying desperately to look cool and like you know what you're doing.

Myself, I never paid attention to the lyrics. I got the song almost EXACTLY a year ago...for free, because I always get iTunes free music and occasionally keep it around. My version is actually by "The Puppini Sisters" and it seems even more rhythmic. Like they sat around saying "hey, we like this song. It reminds us of walking around The Primary Room as young sisters trying to do a ridiculous dance we didn't grow up with. Everyone knows it's old and unhip, so when we re-release it, let's FLAUNT that. Make it sound even older and more unhip!" and somehow, that worked. Because it's very good, and I like it better than the Bangles' version.

It apparently took me a year to listen to the lyrics...but I have to say, I'm impressed. The song isn't about hieroglyphics. It's about the human state in our sad little box that no one is capable of ever escaping. Bear with me for a minute as I get airy and start talking in circles; I'm quite fond of this epiphany!

They start a verse about the Egyptians themselves. It's funny, and their poking at the canon Egyptian artists weren't allowed to leave. "If they move too quick, they're falling down like a domino". Egyptians created art like they ran their lives- formulaic and precise. Everything had to be the same. THE AWESOMEST THING ABOUT EGYPTIAN ART is when you can see the grid work. Baah. Love that. But there aren't any images on Google Images as cool as the ones in my AP Art History class, so you don't get any examples. In other unrelated news, my blog HATES less-than-three hearts.

The Bangles move from verse to verse gently, as to not freak the listeners out with their very "grrr humanity sucks" message right at first. Not that anyone noticed, anyway. Everyone was too busy dancing. But once you get down to the words, they're saying a very chilling message. Everyone, the foreign types, the bazaar men down by the Nile, the blond waitresses, and even all the Japanese are trapped in this Egyptian grid work.

They're pointing out that we all fit into our little boxes and do exactly what we're expected to do. Stereotypes exist because people are too lazy to leave them. The cops are all in the donut shop because that's what their canon says. Just like the Egyptians, they have to strut around bobbing their hands in ridiculous manners, whether they like it or not. No crime fighting for you!

My favorite verse is the one that I think wraps up the message THE BEST.

All the school kids so sick of books

They like the punk and the metal band

When the buzzer rings (oh whey oh)

They're walking like an Egyptian

I remember in Elementary school thinking it was weird that we were treated like animals to be controlled. We answered to bells like dogs, walked in perfect little lines like ducks, followed the teacher wherever she went like sheep, and probably sounded like an unfortunate combination of all of the above. And yet, no one ever stopped walking around like an animal to be controlled...we just kept walking like Egyptians. We knew our grid and stuck to it.

It's pretty weird that such a bizarre, "just for fun" song can be so deep. Maybe that's why it's so successful...it has 13 covers from all over the world, thousands of YouTube videos and parodies, and millions of little children strutting around Their Primary Room.

Honestly, I don't think its progressive message pointing out human folly is why it's been successful. And noticing it has sort of changed it forever now. It's like how I can't hear "Ring-Around-the-Rosie" without thinking of the singing children donned in Medieval clothing and dropping dead with big splotches of The Plague all over their pretty little faces. But the first thing I think of with that song is still, and will forever remain those silly little afternoons in The Primary Room, trying to act cool for my sister and our friends by dancing like people from a time I will never know.

That is, 1986.

Is it really necessary to cite the title today?